This is another conversation between - you've guessed it - an atheist and an evangelical Christian. Enjoy it. Oh, you might want to read the first conversation before this to make sense of this shit - it's a little way down the page.
Mr Atheist: Mr Christian, how are you?
Mr Christian: Well, if you must know I feel slightly befuddled. Your last barrage took me aback somewhat.
Mr Atheist: Good.
Mr Christian: [Silence.]
Mr Atheist: I'll tell you what, Mr Christian. To save you the bother of talking (and this writer - whomever he is - from writing 'Mr Christian' over and over again) why don't I do most of the talking?
Mr Christian: [Makes gurgling sounds - he may have gone to be with Jesus.]
Mr Atheist: When you're ready.... Ok. Well, Mr Christian, my question today involves certain ontological arguments - specifically the First Cause argument. Know what that is?
Mr Christian: [Silence - gurgling has stopped.]
Mr Atheist: Well, I'll infer from your silence that you do.
Mr Christian: [Falls off his chair.]
Mr Atheist: I'll begin. You believe that God created everything - the Heavens and the Earth and all that jazz. If you go back through every action that's ever occured, right back to the Big Bang, you get to the first cause. To the first cause - to you, at least - you give the name of God. My question is this: if everything has a cause, then what created God? If you say that God has always existed, he would've had to create this universe at some point, right?
Also, if God has existed for ever he could've created this universe at any moment. Now, you think God is the ultimate law-giver. Answer me this, then: why did he choose to create it 13.7 billion years ago? (Forget the fact that true fundamentalist Christians believe in Genesis - that the Earth was created in 4004 BC (and that there were fucking dinosaurs on the ark).) If God is the ultimate law-giver, he could've created it at any time. This implies that he was bound by some higher law in creating the universe; thus, he is not the ultimate law-giver. Also, everything you see around you today could potentially have been created differently. But it wasn't. Why not? Because God isn't the ultimate law-giver. There is no ultimate law-giver and there is no God. See?
Natural laws in this universe came about by chance. The multiverse theory maintains that there could be an infinite number of universes out there, all with different types of natural laws. In some universes, life can never arise because the values of such universes' natural laws are counter-productive with regard to being suitable for life. In ours, we have the right set of natural values (such as the right charges on subatomic particles and the right sizes and distribution of atoms and so on) so, naturally, life occassionally arises of its own volition (i.e. completely by chance). Thus, life is no more than a chemical accident. Or, to put it more poetically, a chemical miracle. I use the word 'miracle' lightly, though, because there are potentially millions of life-bearing planets out there - in our galaxy alone. (So who knows - there could be billions of life-bearing planets in our universe, and thousands of sentient, colonising species out there just as intelligent as Homo Sapiens. Perhaps they're even more intelligent, but they're just as pessimistic about finding other sentient life out there as we are.)
Mr Christian: [His ears begin to drip a steady trickle of blood.]
Mr Atheist: Mr Christian? Mr Christian? Oh, Mr Christian, do behave - this isn't theatre, you know! Where was I...? Oh! So, if everything has a cause, then God must have one, too. If God has no first cause, then God may as well be the universe. (After all, if he has always been here he would've had to circumvent his supposedly divine natural laws. What's the point in making natural laws if all you're gonna do is occasionally usurp them? Seems a bit pointless, huh?) The quandary is this: if he has always existed, he can be the universe only. If he came into existence suddenly, he must have had a cause - the universe does run on cause and effect, after all - things aren't run by friggin' magic! (Oh, wait, to Christians things are run by magic, huh?)
In other words, he was created by an 'upper' god. Now, following this train of logic leads one nowhere - one can follow it indefintely, saying this god was created by another and that one by another and so on. It gets you nowhere, see? The only counter-argument you have at this point is something along the lines of: 'Well, God works in mysterious ways. He must've done it by magic!' That, of course, is an intellectually weak argument. You can have no proof for the existence of God, and logic will ultimately repulse any counter-points you have.
Mr Christian: [The paramedics have just arrived. They begin to gel the defibrilator pads and apply them to his contorted chest.]
Mr Atheist: Speechless, huh? I'm guessing you'd like to change the subject now? Well, there's no reason to believe the universe was created. It may be that it has always been here. Maybe our minds are so impoverished and underdeveloped that such an idea is currently beyond our grasps. So far as our knowledge goes, though, there was an event called the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. This has been proven true by scientific evidence - namely Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation (CBMR)*. Look into 'multiverse theory' (and M-theory [Membrane theory]) if you'd like to find out the best scientific evidence for how the Big Bang may have occured. Oh, wait: you can't. You're dead now. Diddums!
Take it easy, folks. This conversation was sponsered by Jump! For Jesus - the new range of ever-so-divine sprays for him by Joop Jump.
*If you'd like me to elucidate on these scientific points, please ask. I can give full descriptions for you to de-mystify any of your confusions. Also, if you spot any solecisms or technical errors, please tell me of them.
*Most Christians are willfully ignorant of physics. Forget the fact that the speed of light is 186,000 thousand miles per second (in a complete vacuum) and that light never stops moving, because, by their reckoning, God created light when he created the universe (13.7 billion years ago - or in 4004 BC, if you're a Christian) and somehow 'brought' it here with him on his merry way to Earth. Again, this is an intellectually empty riposte. Light from the farthest stars takes light years to reach the Earth.
To put that into perspective, Proxima Centauri - the closet extra-solar star to us - is 4.2 light years away - i.e. light (travelling at the speed of light, of course) would take 4.2 years to get there from the Sun, and light from Proxima Centauri would also take 4.2 years to reach the Earth. So, in effect, we're seeing a star not as it is but as it was 4.2 years ago. (Another way of looking at this is the following: if the Sun were to instantly shut down we wouldn't know of it for eight minutes, because light travelling from the Sun to the Earth takes just over eight minutes to arrive. In that situation, everything would suddenly go pitch-black after eight minutes, of course.) By conventional propulsion methods (current methods) we could send a probe there at around 50,000 miles per hour. However, that probe would not get to said star for some 10,000 years. Space is big, and technology isn't all that yet!
To believe in Creationism is to reject most mainstream scientific ideas - the rejection of evolution, the Big Bang and geological history are just a few examples. In fact, that's all Creationism is (along with 'Intelligent Design') - the rejection and denial of plain, empirical truths.
(God knows I don't even want to capitalise the word 'Creationism' because it doesn't deserve to be capitalised.... Or does he? Let me rephrase that: a non-existent, spooky, malevolent, invisible, indifferent, bearded man who lives in the clouds and can see me quite plainly from astronomical distances and read my mind telepathically knows that I shouldn't capitalise the word 'Creationism'. Now, that's more like it!)
I'll leave you with a final thought: there are no mysteries; there is only what we don't understand and what we make mysterious through our ignorance. Open up your minds, folks. Don't be dumb, unthinking, accepting, indifferent shits now!
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